Schumer, Gillibrand Blast Senate GOP Health Care Bill

The stealthily-crafted Senate health care reform bill, unveiled Thursday, eliminates individual and employer mandates and Obamacare taxes, shifting power to the states, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York is railing against the legislation. He says it strips away benefits from the neediest Americans to give tax breaks to the wealthy, and adds that it is worse than the House version, which President Donald Trump has described as "mean"...

Charles Schumer: sharper teeth

New York's senior senator says many Republican senators are learning the details of the bill the same way Democrats are: "They're reading it today."

New York's junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, echoed Schumer's feelings on the Senate version of the health care bill. Gillibrand has released the following statement:

Access to quality, affordable health care in America should be a right, not a privilege. The Senate bill presented today, which was crafted behind closed doors by 13 men, would fundamentally harm Americans young and old, do severe damage to a fragile economy, and bankrupt state governments across the country.

It is unfathomable that the Senate GOP wants to ask middle class and low-income workers to pay more money for less coverage, all to cut taxes for insurance companies and the wealthiest among us. I could not think of a more out-of-touch or insulting proposal to working Americans already struggling with the high cost of health care today.

The cuts to Medicaid in particular are galling. Today, Medicaid serves one in five Americans - not only the poor, but two-thirds of those in nursing homes, more than 30 million children, and countless individuals with disabilities. To end the Medicaid expansion created under the Affordable Care Act is a cruel joke, as is the blatantly partisan attack on women's health by defunding Planned Parenthood and allowing waivers to opt out of essential benefit requirements that cover maternity care.

On behalf of my constituents, who have spoken out overwhelmingly against the cruel proposals in the American Health Care Act, I will do everything in my power to block this bill from becoming law. If you thought the House bill was bad, or "mean," as President Trump put it, the Senate bill is even worse.